Exxon's internal research accurately predicted climate change from 1977-1986. Despite knowing fossil fuels caused warming, the company publicly funded climate denial campaigns.
“The science of climate change is too uncertain to warrant immediate action”
From “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
The internal memos were marked confidential. In 1977, Exxon's own scientists began warning company leadership that burning fossil fuels was warming the planet—and that the consequences would be severe. Yet for nearly four decades, Exxon would become one of the largest financial backers of organizations casting doubt on that very science.
This isn't a recent discovery or a leaked allegation. It's documented fact, confirmed through investigative journalism that examined Exxon's own records and internal research. The company knew. And they acted accordingly—which meant acting against what their scientists had told them.
Starting in 1977, Exxon funded a sophisticated in-house research program staffed with respected scientists. These weren't fringe researchers or doomsayers. They were competent petroleum geologists and climate specialists who conducted rigorous studies on how carbon dioxide from fossil fuels would accumulate in the atmosphere. By 1982, Exxon's scientists had produced a detailed internal assessment projecting global temperature increases and rising sea levels. The accuracy of their models is striking when compared to climate science today. They weren't off by orders of magnitude. They were in the ballpark.
The company didn't dismiss these findings internally. Executives received briefings. The research was treated as legitimate. Some Exxon scientists even presented their work at scientific conferences throughout the 1980s. The research was sound. The conclusions were clear.
Yet somewhere between the laboratory and the boardroom, acknowledgment became obscured. By the mid-1980s, 's public position began shifting. The company started funding think tanks and organizations that questioned climate science—sometimes the very same scientists who had conducted Exxon's own research were now questioning its validity in public forums. The company wasn't debating the science. It was funding a systematic effort to create doubt about conclusions it already knew to be accurate.
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When this history emerged through Inside Climate News's investigation, the response from Exxon was telling. The company didn't produce documents proving their scientists had been wrong. Instead, they argued that the science in the 1980s was "uncertain" and that funding different perspectives was reasonable. But this framing obscures what actually happened: a company shelved inconvenient findings and invested millions in public relations that contradicted what its own experts had determined.
This matters beyond corporate accountability or historical interest. For decades, policy makers, investors, and citizens lacked information they deserved to have. Climate action was delayed while one of the world's largest fossil fuel companies—one that possessed accurate internal projections—publicly funded the very confusion it was privately trying to manage.
The documented record shows that the claim wasn't just true—it was systematically verified and then systematically contradicted by the same institution. This is why institutional trust erodes. It's not that companies sometimes get things wrong. It's that institutions sometimes know the truth and choose a different public narrative for financial gain.
The path Exxon's scientists identified in 1977 was never the one the company chose to take.
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Conspirators
~200Network
Secret kept
48.9 years
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500+ years
